Today was one of the most beautiful and scenic days I have been fortunate enough to witness in my short 21 years of life. We awoke at the ripe hour of 4:30 am to get our gear packed up and get into the park before the gate guards arrived and began charging $10 a head. Not a very good price when there are more than 30 of us going through. Before we even left the church parking lot though, we were greeted by a friendly ungulate in the form of an enormous elk walking by. He did not seem too bothered by us gaping at him so we got in close and took a few good pictures before setting off on our skyward journey.
We made it into Rocky Mountain National Park by 6:45 am, early enough to elude the watchful eye of park rangers and began our ascent of Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuously paved highway in the United States. Amazingly enough, we made pretty good time up the entire 20 mile climb, averaging between 6 and 8 mph on most of the sections. The views were incredible up the entire ride, so I will not even begin to attempt a description, but everyone’s cameras seemed to be out as much as not. Highlights of the ride include playing in the snow at the peak of the mountains, Dustin sledding down the snow embankment on his rain jacket, seeing a marmot for the first time, an enormous herd of about 50 elk in the tundra, riding above the Timberline, an amazing descent out of the park, standing on the continental divide, and nearly running into an enormous bull elk I spooked while plunging down a big hill. It was amazing that it took us about four hours to reach the top of a 20 mile climb to 12,183 ft, and about 40 minutes to descend out of the park. It was also surprising to see how many cyclists were out for the day riding the course for fun. Definitely more than your average ride. All in all the day was beyond amazing, and it seemed we couldn’t keep our jaws from hanging open at the views we were catching. It was even sweeter too because we felt we earned the rewards by paying in sweat. I’m sure the day will go down as one of, if not THE greatest ride of our summers.
Day 33 – Leadville, CO – 103 miles
Today we decided it would be a good idea to ride a century in the Rocky Mountains. To accomplish this task, we awoke at 4:30 am to get an extra-early start on the day and learned that it is cold in the morning when you are in the mountains. VERY cold. As we sped away from the church shortly after 6:00 am, I checked the temperature on my cyclocomputer to discover an ambient temperature of 38 degrees! This is cold enough when standing still, but add a 20 mph wind chill from the bicycles an you have a recipe for freezing. I cannot describe how cold we are, as even the Canadian on our trip was frozen solid. Fingers and toes that were exposed to the air ached in a way that I have never even experienced in a snow-skiing setting. After a blustering 10 miles we reached the next small town as a group and immediately fled into the first diner we saw and decided to wait out the cold. Enormous mugs of hot chocolate and fantastic breakfasts were enough to instill courage in us to head back outside 45 minutes late into now 50 degree weather. Since the sun had come up, the temperature quickly rose as we made our way towards what we believed to be our impending doom. Nothing is worse than thinking that a huge climb is coming. We had been told to expect two large climbs over passes during the day, so we were constantly on edge looking for the road to head off over mountain peaks where they were likely buried in snow still. But to our relief, no such climb came until very late in the day. We spent most of our day riding in the valley between mountains, stopping once for a slurpee break when we saw a gas station on our route. We even were fortunate enough to spend several miles on bike paths today. Colorado has gained even more points in everyone’s eyes because it is so bicycle friendly.
At our second lunch stop after a beautiful ride through a canyon, we met a representative from SRAM (a bicycle components company) who was helping out at a Specialized Bicycle fair where buyers from all over the world come to test out bikes from the same company who sponsored us this year. After a few pictures, we got back on the road and finally found our climb. We headed up for several mile, eventually reaching the summit of Fremont Pass at 11,318 ft where Climax Molybdenum was located. An interesting point about this pass we learned, was that it was the western bound of the Louisiana purchase in 1803, and therefore the westernmost part of the United States. We crested the pass and flew down the next 12 miles into Leadville, the highest incorporated city in America at 10,200 ft. Our host for the night provided an incredible chili dinner which everyone devoured after our long century ride. Its just hard to believe that in a few short hours we will be waking up to do it all again. Yikes.
Day 34 – Gunnison, CO – 119 miles
Once again we must prove our level of hard-core in an unnecessarily long day of riding. A 119 mile ride is very long in any terrain, but in the Rocky Mountains it becomes a whole different ball game. We began in Leadville a little later than yesterday in order to avoid the frigid cold and allow the sun to warm things up a bit, but it was still mid-50s when we shoved off on the day’s ride. We started things off quick with a 40 mile dash to the first lunch stop. I say dash because it was mostly downhill or neutral terrain and I had an average speed of 22 mph when we pulled into our stop. This was only broken by not one, but two flats at mile 20; one for Matt and one for Shane. At least we are getting very fast at our flat-changing.
After lunch, the ride was pretty quick, with some beautiful scenery of the surrounding mountains. We passed both Mt. Harvard and Mt. Yale which are part of the collegiate mountains. At about mile 58 we passed through a small town and the road turned up in the beginning ascent of Monarch Pass. After passing over Trail Ridge Road, we figured that everything else would be a breeze. Monarch Pass proved us very wrong. We climbed for about 15 miles at a grade that was much steeper than that in Rocky Mountain National Park in many places. Eventually, after spending far too much time in our granny gears, we reached the summit of 11,312 ft at mile 75 to find Mo camped out with supplies for more PB&Js as well as a small shop where we feasted on hotdogs for a change of pace and a celebration for cresting the top.
Back on our bikes, we bombed down the mountain at an average of 35-40 mph, covering the distance that took us about two hours on the way up in less than 20 minutes going down. Nevertheless, there is still nothing as exciting as rocketing around corners at those speeds. Definitely worth the climb. The remainder of our epic day was spend pounding out the miles over rolling hills as we headed west through a valley towards Gunnison and eventually Utah. When we arrived in Gunnison, we had expected to be camping out on the campus of Western State University, but to our delight found that Jess had scored us a place to stay at a nearby church. As we had a bit of light rain on our ride into town we were beyond excited for this news. Dinner was hosted by the local Habitat chapter and was definitely some of the best food we have received on the trip. Eggplant Florentine was served if that is any hint on the quality of grub laid out. Great end to a tiring day. Oh yeah, and I showered for the first time in 48 hours and 220 miles. Best feeling in the world.
-Sir Used-To-Smell-Like-Feet-And-Wet-Dog
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